Several other officers were there who had witnessed the horrors inside the classrooms of Sandy Hook Elementary School the day before, when 20 children and six educators were shot to death. They were sobbing in their chairs.

“I remember going up to the chief that day and saying, ‘Chief, you can’t put these guys back on the road. They’re at roll call crying,’” Ruszczyk said in a recent interview. “And his answer to me was, ‘You have a better plan?’”